The present invention relates to devices for recording and reproducing the contents, including images, voice data and the like.
The digital contents reproduction devices including a CD player are popularly accepted because of clear tone quality and less degradation of tone quality caused by long-term use. However, it has become possible to copy digital contents free of degradation by faithfully duplicating it bit by bit, and in actuality such devices have already been commercialized. The presence of such copying device is a great advantage to the contents user, but for the contents provider, it is not desirable because such device exerts tremendous influence on the sales of contents.
Consequently, the contents provider copes with new digital devices (and media) when they are commercialized by not providing them with the contents. However, this condition causes big interference to popularization of new electronic devices, and prevents not only almost all people from enjoying the convenience but also contents providers from enjoying business chances.
On the other hand, the privately copied contents for the user to enjoy the contents personally is the right authorized by the Copyright Law, and in actuality, for many electronic devices, the privately copied contents has been admitted with some restriction to the duplication system (restriction to the analog recording, etc.). However, when digital recording becomes the mainstream in years to come, it becomes difficult to determine the privately copied contents from officially copied contents, and at the same time, it becomes difficult to determine whether the copy is the privately copied contents or the authorized copied contents.
By the way, in this invention, the privately copied contents means the copy for local use and carried out by the person who has no dealership of the relevant source (digital contents), while the officially copied contents means the copy for global use and carried out by the person who has the dealership to the relevant source. That is, the officially copied contents are only able to be acquired by the means equivalent to the conventional contents sales, which include the sales from an electronic shopping mall on the Internet.